Shepherd University



CHEVELLE MAN

Daniel Al-Daqa

The barn had long since been emptied. It was because raising livestock wasn’t paying for itself anymore. Dad rented the space out for storage, the money helped after he lost his job at the paper mill. He and Ma said it was enough to get by on but I heard them fight a lot. One guy took most of the space to work on cars. It was his business so most of the vehicles he didn’t own except for an old, yellow Chevelle SS. He spent more time under the hood of that car. I asked Ma if he had a family and she said she didn’t know.

I enjoyed being out by the barn, staring at that Chevelle. I spent a lot of time there in the back yard feeding stray cats that lingered around. I tried to get a little closer to the barn each day to get a better look. The Chevelle man eventually took notice and walked over toward me in his mechanic’s jumpsuit with grease smears across the chest and a lip full of tobacco chew.

“Keep them cats away from here,” he said standing over me and casting a storm cloud shadow, “Don’t want ‘em near my car.”

That was the first time I talked to him and that was all he said.

*

For whatever reason, this one day he left fast. I was out back getting clothes off the line for Ma when the Chevelle man called out to me.

“Keys are in it, boy. Lock up for me.”

Then he just tore off in his flatbed truck and left his Chevelle there with the doors and trunk wide open. I put down the clothes basket and the dry grass crinkled beneath the weight. It had been a year or so since I’d had the nerve to go in the barn and it felt odd to do so. I looked back at the house to see if Ma was watching from the kitchen window. The Chevelle shined and the smell of leather polish came from the open doors. The keys were on the front seat hooked to an eight ball keychain. As I leaned in, something nudged at my heel. One of the strays I’d been feeding looked up at me. I kneeled down and scratched behind its ears, took a Ziploc of treats that I kept in my pocket and held my hand open with a few.

I turned back to the Chevelle, looked in at the shifter’s chrome trim. The cat came around and stepped up onto the floorboard, started rubbing its chin on the gas pedal.

“Get out, get,” I said trying to be quiet like someone would hear me. The cat looked at me blankly and finally climbed out. I brushed what hair I could out of the car and closed the doors, turned the key to lock it and left them hanging on a hook above the Chevelle man’s workbench. I rolled the barn door closed and it squeaked on the rusty track. I left just enough space for the cat to get out.

The Chevelle man didn’t come back for several days. Ma denied me every time I asked to go look at the car again.

“You did what he asked of you. No more reason to be nosing around out there unless he tells you otherwise,” she said.

*

When he finally came back it didn’t take long before he was knocking hard on our door. Dad answered. I stood beside him.

“That damn cat your boy keeps feedin’ had a litter in the trunk of my Chevelle.” He was much taller that my Dad. His face was red and he wore the same mechanic’s suit as always. His breath smelled like Dad’s used to when he’d go to the bar after a day at the mill.

“Well I sure am sorry about that, I’ll see that they’re taken out of there,” Dad said as he shot me a quick look. My face felt hot and I knew I’d forgotten the trunk.

“Don’t damn well care what you do. Just get rid of them. Left a bunch of field mice, just the heads, in there, too.”

Shortly after, Ma walked out to the barn with a large cardboard box and collected the kittens, brought them to the house. Their eyes were still closed. She said I could make a sign to put out at the mailbox. Free kittens.

Later, we fed them milk with a glass dropper on the living room floor. Ma wouldn’t let me hold them. Said I’d squeeze too hard.

“Ma, why was the man yelling at Dad before?” I asked.

“Oh, honey, he was just mad because he loves that car so much.”

“Is that why Dad didn’t yell back?”

“Yes, honey, daddy understands what it’s like to work so hard for something.”

Ma looked like she was going to cry and stood up. She took the cardboard box and poked some holes in it, put the kittens in, and left them out on the back porch with the top weighted down by a peach basket.

That night I heard her and Dad in the next room over.

“You know nobody’s taking these cats. There’s enough strays as it is,” Ma said.

*

Later on, while I should have been sleeping, I heard something outside on the back porch. I went to the window and watched as the Chevelle man picked himself up after falling and took the box of kittens. He walked back toward the barn. I got out of bed and went down the hall to the living room.

“Ma, why’s he taking the kittens?” I asked. She was on the couch next to my Dad watching television.

“Who, honey?”

“The Chevelle man.”

Ma told me to stay in the house. Her and Dad went out to the barn. I stood alone in the living room. It wasn’t long before I could hear yelling through the open windows. I went outside. Yellow light glowed from the open doors of the barn. Ma and Dad were out there and so was the Chevelle man.

I began to walk toward them and noticed the sign I made was leaning up against the house.

When I reached the entrance of the barn I could hear cats. That same mew they made when we were feeding them with the dropper.

“Please. Please, don’t, someone will take them,” I heard Ma say. She was scared.

“I finally had a buyer. Went to see him today,” the Chevelle man said, “He’d’ve given me seventy grand for this Chevelle, know that? Then your cats lined the trunk with shit and their mouse scraps and when you took ‘em you couldn’t even clean it up. He told me he wouldn’t buy a classic from someone who didn’t care for it,” the Chevelle man spat chew on the dusty floor and grinded his brown teeth, “These cats got to go.”

He had a five gallon bucket filled with water. I watched him reach into the box with both hands and pull out the five kittens by the scruff. He dropped them in the bucket, put the peach basket from the porch over them, and weighed it down with a brick.

“Do something, dammit!” Ma yelled at Dad.

He looked down, “We need the rent.”

“You’re a piece of shit, Jim, a real piece of shit,” Ma said.

Dad looked at her without saying anything.

The Chevelle man lifted the brick and the basket, looked down into the bucket. “Now where’d the hell that mother cat go?”

I ran toward the Chevelle man from the doorway. He hit me across the face with the back of his hand. When I fell I knocked over the bucket. Water and the limp kittens poured out on me.

Ma cried out, ran to me, and dropped to her knees. She pulled me up and led me out of the barn.

Dad lunged at the Chevelle man. He made Dad look so small. I was scared for him. The Chevelle man threw Dad to the ground.

Ma kept leading me, “Baby, it’s okay, go inside. It’s okay, you have to go inside.”

“Nobody even saw my sign,” I said.

“I know, baby, it’s okay.”

I looked back into the barn. Dad and the Chevelle man were standing close to each other yelling back and forth.

“Fuck you and that kid of yours.” The Chevelle man turned and opened the driver side door, got in.

“You’re not leaving here without paying rent,” Dad said and put a hand on the roof of the Chevelle and leaned in. The Chevelle man pushed him away.

“I don’t owe shit. You can’t provide for your damn family so you think you can sit back and collect from me. All for this piece of shit building. Sure thing, ace,” the Chevelle man said and turned the ignition.

Ma kept pushing me toward the house.

“Are you ok, baby? Don’t worry it’ll be ok.”

Next I heard a gunshot. Ma screamed so loud then turned back toward the barn and ran. I stood cold.

“Jim! Jim! Dammit, Jim!” she yelled.

I walked up slowly behind Ma and stood looking from the barn doorway. My Dad was covered in blood splatter, kneeled down next to the Chevelle man who had fallen from the front seat, the driver’s door swung wide open. The Chevelle man didn’t move. He just laid there dead as the kittens on the ground to his right. Dad had a gun in his hand and in the yellow light of the big barn bulbs, it looked more gold than silver. He looked like a different person. I never knew he had a gun.

Ma was crying. She dropped to her knees, too.

“Why, Jim?”

“He’d have left and we’re so far behind on the house. And this car, well maybe with this car…” Dad trailed off.

They both looked in my direction but Ma didn’t try to get me away. She just let me stare at the Chevelle man with a hole still seeping blood in his chest. The way the blood soaked through the dark blue of his mechanic’s suit made it just look like a lot of grease.

Ma’s tone changed, “We gotta get rid of the body, Jim?”

“Yeah.”

It felt like I stared at the Chevelle man for a long time before Ma stood up. She walked over to me and didn’t say anything. She brought me through the door. I looked over my shoulder and Dad was still kneeled down, looking at the hole in the Chevelle man’s chest.

Ma led me inside and up to my bedroom. She got me into bed and put a cover over me.

“Sometimes bad dreams seem real, don’t they, baby?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s okay, go to sleep now.”

She turned the light off and I heard her walk back down the hall and down the stairs. She went back outside and I heard the bilco doors creak. I went to my window and watched her bring out two shovels. She handed one to Dad. Then I looked over towards the barn. The old mother cat was pacing outside. She walked in and came out holding one of the limp kittens in her mouth. She laid it on the ground outside the door and nudged it with her nose.

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